


mercy

by mitzvahmelting



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types, Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Bottom Bruce, Depression, Dissociation, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship/Love, Mental Health Issues, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Top Diana, sex as coping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 01:17:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8557024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/pseuds/mitzvahmelting
Summary: “It’s difficult to focus on any one thing. To be present. I keep…” and his fingers gesture what his words can’t express, the flippant motion of his own consciousness wandering off from his body. Why can’t he just enjoy being with her? 
   She’s the one who condescends to bed him, after all. She deserves his whole attention.





	

His fingers are slick inside her, pistoning forward into her heat, rubbing long strokes against the smooth walls of muscle inside of her. And her spine is curling back away from him, her breasts arching toward the recess lights, lips parted and curled into a smile, eyes almost shut with pleasure as she rides his knuckles.

And he… can’t will up the energy to care.

Not that he doesn’t care—really, he does. Or, he should. He wants to let the pure aesthetic beauty of her body wash away all his thoughts and impulses and concerns.

And her eyes aren’t quite shut yet, and she can see him. And she knows.

Her warm fingers wrap around his wrist, gently guiding him to stop. “Bruce,” she whispers, affectionate and laced with the pity one may feel for a confused child, “You’re not enjoying this.”

Frustrated and embarrassed that she’d stopped enjoying herself on his account, he pushes forward and tries to bring her back into the moment, running a palm up her inner thigh and pressing his lips to her cheek. “That doesn’t matter; this is about you.” He slides the pad of his thumb carefully against her clit, “Let me pleasure you.”

If only she would take what he says at face value, this would be so much easier. If only she would listen to what he says without always smiling down at him, curious and patient, trying to divine what he really _means._

She’s shaking her head, and pushing him away with warm fingers against his shoulders, chuckling quietly at his misplaced enthusiasm. And then her thumb runs down his cheek, and she lifts his chin so he meets her eyes. “Nothing,” she says emphatically, “gives me more pleasure than your trust in me.”

Moments like these, he is abruptly reminded that she is no mere mortal. She is a demigod. There is divinity in her eyes, and centuries of wisdom he could never even hope to match.

He is a teammate, yes, but he’s also a child to her.

He grunts impatiently and concedes, rolling over and collapsing so his back and skull slap against the pillow beside hers. She laughs at his feigned aggravation, pressing a gentle kiss against his temple as she shifts to accommodate the body next to her. “What troubles you?” she asks quietly.

“Nothing,” he says. Her fingertips run down the middle of his chest, down his sternum, gentle as a gust of wind. He lets out a breath and tries to look away.

She asks, then, if she can touch the golden lasso to his skin. She doesn’t ask with words, she just meets his eyes, and the question is evident in the sympathetic frown, the shine of her eyes in the dim lighting. He nods, keeps his jaw shut and lets his gaze wander the blank, empty golden ceiling as she fetches the rope from her discarded clothes.

It highlights her chin and her upper lip when she hauls it onto the bed with her, lighting her from beneath like a buttercup flower. And then its smooth length is looped gently around his wrist, and he sighs and turns away from her.

“Bruce,” she whispers, and she moves closer, running a palm up his shoulder, “what troubles you?”

“Nothing,” he murmurs, “Everything,” which is as vague an answer as he would have given even without the lasso. Shows how much he lacks a concrete grasp of his own feelings. “It’s difficult to focus on any one thing. To be present. I keep…” and his fingers gesture what his words can’t express, the flippant motion of his own consciousness wandering off from his body. Why can’t he just enjoy being with her?

She’s the one who condescends to bed him, after all. She deserves his whole attention.

She gently pushes him down so his stomach is flat against the bed, her fingers running down his spine and flank. “You want to feel grounded,” she says, and he grunts assent, then sighs as her fingertips spread him open underneath her.

With Diana, it is always so much easier to be the receiving partner. She has so much inside of her, eager to release into energy and passion. And he is so, so empty. Better to receive her passion, to let her have her way and make use of him as she will. He hasn’t the focus or energy to reciprocate.

He’s dissociating, sort of. His mind is somewhere hovering near the ceiling of this room, or even further, out among the stars.

But her mouth trails kisses against his skin, open and slick, and she’s tugging him down, closer, back to his own body.

Her tongue licking up against the barrier of his body, the thin membrane of what separates him from the rest of the world. Teasing like a wet finger sliding down the film of a soap bubble. She’s going to pop him open.

And maybe it’s the lasso, or maybe he’s just ready to be honest with himself and with her about how this feels, but he finally lets out a small whimper with the corner of his lip stuck against the cotton pillowcase. Emboldened, she grips his hip and pulls him back over onto his back. He acquiesces willingly enough, and looks up at her, not upset or sad but just bemused, lost, and somehow soothed by the kindness in her face.

There’s a playful growl in her voice when she kneels over him and repeats to his face, “Nothing,” passionate and truthful and emphatic, “gives me more pleasure than your trust in me.” She’s smiling—no, grinning down at him like a fool in love.

“I do,” he says, tired down to his bones, “I trust you.”

She purrs, lifts his knees into the air and settles them about her hips as if to mount him. It occurs to him that yes, that is what she intends to do. Strap on a phallus and penetrate his soul at the root. Yes, he thinks again, as she moves his body for him. So much easier to be the receiving partner, with Diana. She has so much more to give.

“I trust you,” he says again, and she pushes into him, and he shuts his eyes and says this as if it’s only just now hitting him, “you’re the only one. The only one.” Not even Clark, not the others, not Alfred, not his children. Not like this. Not the way he can let everything go and let her carry him, his goddess in silk sheets. Worship at the mountain of her flesh. She presses into him again and he snarls at the sudden pain, reaches out blindly for her hand. She holds him.

“I trust you,” he says. And she says, “Yes.” Growls her pleasure and presses deeper still, squeezes her hand around his wrist and noses at the skin at the side of his neck. He makes a throaty noise and her body shivers above him, carves a space inside his body.

No thoughts floating above him anymore, he’s trapped by the intoxicating pleasure of her touch on his mortal form. He doesn’t deserve this. To feel so pinned down and locked inside his own skin is a luxury. Normally he has to keep thinking and planning and strategizing… no time for nerve endings and warm lips and whispered promises he could never allow himself to keep.

“I can’t be Batman anymore.”

Her hips still. He’s not looking at her but at the wall beside them, knees still spread open wide to receive her, sweat gathering along his hairline. Peripherally he sees her glance down at the lasso still looped loosely around his fingers.

She touches his cheek and tells him, “That’s only the depression talking, Bruce.”

“Yes,” he whispers, absently. The wall of his watchtower bedroom is smooth titanium steel alloy, but somehow he can still see the ghostly afterimages of the impact of his own fist against it. No dents in the wall, but it still feels like the world is crumpling around him like tinfoil, paper-thin and sinking into gravity’s pull. Her fingers are touching the sensitive parts of his chest. His breathing is uneven as he says, “I’m so tired, Diana.”

She presses a kiss against his nipple and the dark skin hardens under her mouth—the air rattles in his lungs, fragile. “I know,” she says, still smiling down at him like a compassionate god. “You are ill, in your mind, but you will get well again.”

Her breasts press warm half-flush against him as she faces him. A curtain of her dark hair feathers against his forehead. He feels so hollow, and he can’t remember a time he felt any different from this. He may be dying. He may have died already. The experience of her lovemaking is so surreal and preternatural, it surely came from the afterlife. “I can’t go on like this,” he breathes.

“You can,” she tells him, her voice low and sober and honey-warm, “You will.” A kiss to the corner of his jaw, just below his ear, and her breath is hot against his neck as she tells him carefully, “You are a warrior.”

“…Yes,” he chokes out. What else can he say? The oppressive weight of duty bears down on him, makes it nigh impossible to breathe. The corners of his eyes are burning.

“Hush,” she says, as if to soothe him. Her fingers hook underneath his knees, “Let me,” and she spreads his body open, defenseless, shameless. One hand settles against his hip to stabilize, the other presses a thumb against the vulnerable, soft flesh of his member, coaxing him.

She pushes inside of him, rhythmic and methodical. His thighs flinch closer to his chest as if to curl fetal, he can’t catch a full breath and his vision is blurry. He is overwhelmed, perhaps not with pleasure, but overstimulation. The incessant pounding of waves against a rocky shoreline eroding his wind-weathered mind. Drowning in the undertow, his lungs fill with sea water.

“It’s okay, Bruce,” she tells him, and the hand that had braced his hip now reaches up to intertwine their fingers. He becomes erect. She kisses away tears. “You’re alright, you’re alright.”

Each thrust of her hips connects like thunder, each bolt of lightning pleasure coursing through his blood. There is ancient power in her body. She fills him with burning awe, and he suffers, as one who stares too long at the sun.

She comes, grinding against the base of the phallus and in so doing grinding it deeper inside of him, tumult of storm, his heart capsizing somewhere in time, his chest feeling tight, mouth gaping. His own seed dribbles out against his stomach, and his whole form is wracked with tremors as she holds him still and pants.

His teeth are grit, his eyes are shut tight. His mind is everywhere at once, spinning and dizzy. “Diana,” he croaks, and her grip squeezes his fingers.

“I’m here,” she says.

“Diana…” he whines again, groping blindly in the dark of his own mind for her other hand.

Then she’s holding him, and the room itself has gone dark. He is warm, and tucked into her body, safe. The earth still rotates slowly below. The path of their orbit is steady. He can feel the stability of movement all around him. He can sense it.

“I love you,” she breathes against his ear, holding him in the dark, “I will _always_ love you.” And he knows the words she is saying mean something more profound than romantic love, something timeless and spiritual, the way a god loves a man.

Something to lull a broken, jaded soldier to rest.

So he sleeps in her arms. And when he wakes, feels a little more whole.

**Author's Note:**

> what are your thoughts on this one? let me know in the comments
> 
> or talk to me on [my tumblr](mitzvahmelting.tumblr.com)


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